Paul Shread

Network Appliance has sued Sun Microsystems, claiming Sun’s ZFS file system technology infringes on seven NetApp patents. In the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, NetApp is also seeking a declaration that it is not infringing on three of Sun’s U.S. patents and that those patents are invalid. The dispute affects […]

Diligent Technologies scored a big win today, announcing that Sun Microsystems will resell its ProtectTIER virtual tape library (VTL) and de-duplicationofferings. The deal had industry watchers wondering about the future of Sun’s OEM relationship with VTL leader FalconStor, but Sun said in a statement that “the Diligent relationship does not change the Sun commitment to […]

Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. said late Thursday that it is selling the bulk of its storage products business to Maxim Integrated Products for $63 million in cash. Maxim will acquire Vitesse’s serial attached SCSI (SAS) and serial attached ATA (SATA) expander product segments, enclosure and baseboard management devices, among other assets of Vitesse’s Storage Products Division. […]

A big name on the founder’s door apparently wasn’t quite enough for grid storage startup Crosswalk, which ceased operations last month. The company launched by McData founder Jack McDonnell started out in storage resource management (SRM) and then “redefined the term ‘180-degree turn’ when they switched not only gears, but probably the whole engine too, […]

Diligent Technologies has netted $10.5 million in fourth-round funding, raising the data protection and de-duplicationspecialist’s total haul to date to $46.5 million. Eastward Capital joined current investors Matrix, Accel and Gemini in the new round, which will be used for R&D and sales, support and engineering efforts. Diligent CEO Doron Kempel said the company is […]

3PAR is the latest storage company to file for an IPO in a week that has already seen the wild success of EMC’s VMware IPO and EqualLogic’s SEC filing. After a two-year hiatus, private storage companies have returned to the public markets with a vengeance in the last year, with at least five going public […]

EqualLogic is the latest storage vendor to seek its fortune in the public markets, filing plans for a $125 million IPO with the SEC late last week. The company is considered the top private iSCSI storage vendor, and its triple-digit growth rate since 2004 seems to support that claim. EqualLogic had sales of $10.4 million […]

EMC’s RSA security division has acquired data loss prevention startup Tablus, which moves the storage giant into the anti-data leakage (ADL) market and also gives it additional discovery and classification capabilities. EMC didn’t disclose the value of the deal, but The 451 Group analysts pegged it at around $50 million. In a recent report, The […]

Sun Microsystems today unveiled a virtual tape library (VTL) that is the first storage product based on its “Thumper” data server. Sun is calling the offering the Sun StorageTek Virtual Tape Library Value (“VTL Value”) System despite its $85,000 price tag. The product combines the Sun Fire X4500 server with FalconStor’s VTL software, powered by […]

And then there was one. F5 Networks on Monday said it will acquire Acopia Networks, leaving Attune Systems as the last standalone player in the file virtualization space, as EMC, NetApp, Brocade and Cisco have swallowed up the rest (see File Virtualization Heats Up). F5 will pay $210 million to add file virtualization and management […]

Clustered network attached storage (NAS) vendor ONStor has closed on a $27 million mezzanine round of funding. New investor Sand Hill Capital joined existing investors Foundation Capital, Mayfield Fund, ComVentures and Worldview Technology Partners in the final round of funding, which ONStor said was at a “significant increase in corporate valuation.” ONStor CEO Bob Miller […]

Brocade’s merger with McData was just enough to give the Fibre Channel switch maker the lead in the high-end modular storage switch market, according to Dell’Oro Group’s first quarter 2007 SAN Report. Brocade sold $95.4 million of high-end SAN switches in the first quarter of 2007, good for a 51.1 percent share of the market […]